In the world of literature, the publishing industry is driven by what the market is willing to pay to read. Publishers receive manuscripts from authors or agents and do their best to determine what will sell. What publishers believe will sell is published; what won't is rejected.
As anyone who has submitted a manuscript to a publisher knows, determining what will sell is largely subjective. In many cases, an editor familiar with the market reads a synopsis or skims part of the manuscript, and then makes the decision. Despite the editor's experience, this kind of subjectivity can lead to errors. Hemmingway is famous for rejections, and the editors who rejected him must have been pretty embarrassed after he became successful. The Hemmingway circumstance teaches us that the so-called slush pile (publishing jargon for the literal pile of unsolicited manuscripts to be reviewed) contains many manuscripts that the public wants to read but will never see the light of day. Why? Because editors are human and therefore imperfect.
Publishers sometimes miss gems, but they make up for this with their remarkable ability to market books, even ones that should have never crawled off the slush pile in the first place. Publishers know how to get books reviewed and arrange book signings and author appearances. Drumming up publicity for a book launch has become the publisher's forte, perhaps at the cost of objectively assessing the strengths and weaknesses of manuscripts.
Self-publishing is an alternative to the traditional publishers described above. When the author and publisher are one and the same, acceptance of a manuscript is virtually guaranteed. However the major problem here is that self-publishers do not, as a rule, do a good job of marketing. Their motto: if I write it, they will buy. The sad truth is you can count the number of successful self-published books on your fingers.
The electronic book (e-book), often found for sale via a Web site on the Internet, is another form of self-publishing. Being virtual, e-books do not incur production costs and require little if any initial investment; however, it is exactly these advantages that cause readers to doubt the quality of e-books. Since anybody can create an e-book, readers will not normally be willing to risk purchasing an e-book unless they are already familiar with the author. Additionally, e-books that are readable only after purchase tend to be shared illegally online between users without payment to the author. In a further blow to e-books, allowing users to read for free and asking for payment only if the user is satisfied with the quality has typically failed to produce significant revenue—even for otherwise highly successful authors. For example, Stephen King attempted to bypass his publisher and sell the serial novel “The Plant” directly to readers on his Web site. He promised to keep writing chapters until the story finished as long as readers kept paying for it. However, a mere 46% of the people who downloaded the novel paid for it, and King has since abandoned the novel after only the sixth chapter due to lack of sufficient payment from readers.
The gap between traditional publishing and self-publishing needs to be filled by a new type of publishing that minimizes the disadvantages of both while amplifying their advantages.